Cheilectomy - Day 18

Spending a LOT of time reading other people's blogs and alternately making myself a) optimistic that the pain, flexion and swelling is NORMAL, and b) getting completely freaked out that it's all going to pot! So probably best just to STOP reading other people's stuff for a while and concentrate on getting back to normal.

But what does 'normal' look like? Well, for me, it would be walking 5-7 miles a day, being able to swim in the sea and ride a bike and get out and do stuff. None of that is possible right now, so it looks and feels like I'm a very long way from being 'normal' again. However, I am doing more than I was two weeks ago. I am able to shower, dress, get downstairs, make my own meals, hobble the dog down the street and back, do my gentle toe bending exercises, be pain free (apart from when I'm stretching and walking on the toe) and I was even able to go down to the corner shop and back yesterday. And I went for a little walk while a friend took the dog for some much needed exercise.

So that's progress.

I realise that I need to be patient. That this is as much an exercise of the mind as it is of the body and toe. I had plans next week which I am slowly realising just probably won't come off. But they MIGHT. I just need to ease up being DISAPPOINTED with random expectations based on nothing except pie-in-the-sky notions of what's normal and take things a day at a time.

One thing I've realised is that in this recovery, a week is a very long time.

Quick update on the toe:

The incision is prone to weeping yellowy plasma type liquid when I've done stuff such as showering - I think it's when the swelling gets tights and pulls the wound. I've been reading up about oedema, bone infections, bad reactions to internal sutures, underlying health conditions (e.g. diabetes) and anything else that could explain the swelling. I think I need to wait it out a little longer and keep icing and elevating the leg and see how the swelling and incision wound go over the next couple of days. Holding off giving the foot some much needed moisturising until I'm happy that the incision has stopped having angry bouts.

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